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Back in 2010, when Liliana Gomez was just 25 years old, her doctor diagnosed her with vertigo, a condition that causes constant dizziness, nausea, and lack of balance. For the then-232-pound Gomez, receiving this news was what finally encouraged her to change her life.
For almost as long as Gomez could remember, she’d lived an unhappy life. And after that fateful doctor’s appointment, rather than let the news bring her down further, she said, “I’ve been through a lot. It’s time to learn to love myself and take action.”
The first thing Gomez knew she had to do was to quit drinking every weekend and smoking one, full pack of cigarettes a day. Once she’d stopped both those habits, she registered at a gym in Houston, Texas, and began training with John Kennedy in a “hybrid athletics” program.
These workouts didn’t just focus on one body part or physical element. It combined bodybuilding with cardio, and also exercises that built balance and flexibility in the body.
Kennedy had Gomez start out slowly. They began by tackling her range of body movements and the introduced lifts and squats, as well as some calisthenics.
Within the first month of beginning training, Gomez had lost 20 pounds. And she didn’t feel overwhelmed by having the need to go to the gym every day; Kennedy told her not to just focus on her physical health, but also her mental health.
“I wanted to get healthy from the inside out,” Gomez said.
After three months of physical training, Kennedy encouraged Gomez to begin making healthier food choices because she was now ready to make changes to more of her life.
In order to not overwhelm herself and introduce too much stress into her life, Gomez vowed to just make two healthier choices each day, whether it was ordering salmon and veggies when she ate out, or subbing fries with a side salad.
But this tiny step worked, because soon enough, Gomez was making healthier choices – without even having to remind herself to be healthier.
This strategy was what Kennedy called the “qualitarian” lifestyle. It’s all about “choosing quality food and paying attention to what you put into your body,” Gomez explained. “It’s a lot of greens, grains, nuts, superfoods, and raw foods.”
Gomez, however, acknowledges that all of these changes weren’t easy. She may have been able to incorporate these new regimens into her life, but the dizziness and nausea of her vertigo were still present and they made life difficult.
“At first I had to hold on to the wall for balance so I could walk, or grab onto a chair,” Gomez said. “I've learned what triggers it over time…but at first it was really, really bad. But I told myself that vertigo wouldn't stop me from living a healthier life.”
It’s been tough, this much Gomez makes sure to acknowledge. The entire process of losing weight was already difficult; having vertigo to handle while teaching herself to exercise regularly was an even larger challenge to overcome.
A lot of it was using her mental strength to not let herself give in when she was struggling. The rest of it was realizing and reminding herself that though losing weight was not a “cure” for vertigo, it was at least helping her feel better about her life, mind, and body.
She reminds herself, even through her dizzy spells, to remain mindful of her body and how far it can stretch. She never, however, lets herself get away with not completing a workout. “If I thought that way, I'd never have gotten to where I am now,” she admitted.
Gomez slowly but surely worked toward her goal by setting short-term goals – like losing 20 pounds by a certain date – and long-term goals – completing the Tough Mudder challenge.
Three years after Gomez first started her weight loss, she completed that Tough Mudder challenge. “Everything I did to get and stay healthy, like the mental strength I had built up, helped me get through it. It's that same mental strength that helped me get through my workouts when I first started,” Gomez explained.
Now, although Gomez has dropped from being 232 to just under 150, and has also become a trainer at a gym that she opened herself, she said she’s still working on her own long-term goals and continuing to push herself forward by constantly improving herself. “I want to be 89 years old and still active and healthy.”
